Read through the whole article to know how you could end up being an alpha user for qwiki and possibly stand a chance of winning a t-shirt too. Signing up for our email subscription is one of the methods of getting a qwiki invite as it’d allow me (an alpha tester) to send you an invite.

What is Qwiki?

Qwiki is “the thing” on the internet now. Sample this – you search for “India”, and imagine getting a response from your computer telling you everything about India in the form of a story – with pictures and voice, all synchronized. Yeah, your computer talks to you, and tells you all the key things which you wanted to know about the item searched for in a concise yet complete manner.

How is it different from a Google search or for that matter a Bing search?

Dude, Google doesn’t give you information via multimedia, does it? They give either plain text from other websites, with some photographs and videos that too via Youtube. Here, a qwiki (synonym for a wiki reel kinda movie) would gather all the relevant pictures, textual information from websites like Wikipedia (even LinkedIn for professional profiles), and create a movie out of it.

Yes, they create a movie just for you with a lady speaking on the topic. The text along-with the pictures will be displayed concurrently, and what you’d see will be a QWIKI.

How do I see a Qwiki?

Go to qwiki.com and see your first qwiki. Right now, it’s in the private alpha phase, and so very few people are allowed access inside the website. But, you can still get a feel of the website by seeing the sample qwikis for visitors.

I’m impressed by Qwiki. What is its future?

Well, right now Qwiki has a funding of $9.5 million. Initially, it started out with a seed funding of $1.5 million only. But now, it has got funds amounting to $8 million more and Qwiki is looking forward to soon get out and open up to the public. Right now, Facebook’s co-founder Eduardo Saverin and YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim have invested in it.

Also, there is word that Microsoft may look to takeover Qwiki Inc. and integrate it with its search engine Bing. That might be a strategic move for Microsoft and could help it compete with Google. All depends on the Qwiki team now.

Who founded Qwiki?

Qwiki is the brainchild of Qwiki Doug Imbruce and Louis Monier.

The latter is known as the founder of AltaVista, one of the original web search engines. He has previously also worked at Google and eBay, which he left to join the search startup Cuil as its VP.

Soon, Monier left Cuil as the search product didn’t work out that well. And now he’s full into this visual approach to search and discovery at Qwiki and is the CTO there.

Doug Imbruce is a relatively younger guy, and is Qwiki’s CEO. He has been previously instrumental in creating a network of sites that assist 1000,000 students pursue higher education.

Also, for Indians – there’s an Indian in the team as well – Hema Manickavasagam , the  Information Herder at Qwiki.

Can I have a Qwiki on myself?

Well, if you’re a famous celebrity, then go check qwiki.com, they might already have one on you. If not, you can always publish a Qwiki. The publishing platform is yet to be launched. So, you’d have to wait for it.

What is the Qwiki Alarm Clock Application?

This is the best thing about Qwiki. This is another feature which they are yet to build. It is a personalised alarm clock app, which would wake you up in a personalised manner. It’d tell you everything about the weather outside to the day and date. For the people who tend to forget easily, Qwiki’s alarm app will also tell them their schedule for the day. Awesome, isn’t it?

Check for the Qwiki alarm clock demo here

Why don’t you sign up for Qwiki?

Also, since I’m an alpha tester for qwiki here, so you could drop in your email ID to me and I’d try sending you Qwiki invitations. You could send me your email ID by signing up for the email subscription for The Noob Diary. Do that by just entering your email ID in the box on the right and I’d send you a Qwiki invite asap. The best thing about being an alpha tester is that they’re giving a t-shirt if you watch 25 qwikis and leave a feedback on each one of them.

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